Surrounding the physical body is a luminous energy field, or LEF, that informs our cells and biome—the community of microorganisms in and on our body—about how to live in harmony. The LEF is invisible, though there are people who perceive this energy as an aura, a halo of color around a person’s body.

The LEF can be thought of as the software that instructs your DNA—the hardware—to repair your body. It does this through your brain and nervous system, and the chakras or energy centers in the body. You can upgrade the quality of your LEF through meditation, walks in nature, and prayer. But if you do not update your LEF, or if your brain is full of toxins, and your field cannot upgrade your body, then you simply create your health according to default programs inherited from your family. You will live the way they lived and die the way they died. Our bodies start to develop cancer cells that forget to die and want to live forever, and our systems for keeping them in check will not be able to sustain the battle.

Today we know that 90 percent of the human body consists of bacteria that are not us. Only 10 percent of our body is made up of our own DNA, and that the rest belongs to our biome. So does this mean that “I” am only that 10 percent? No. I am the energy field that organizes this amazing living colony that has a sense of self, of I-ness. The 100 trillion cells of my colony are kept humming in harmony, operating through my brain and nervous system.

Your LEF is a biomagnetic field, which does not end where your skin ends but rather extends to the farthest reaches of the universe, diminishing in intensity, yet never vanishing altogether. Your LEF contains stars and galaxies within it.

If you have heard the expression “Thoughts become things,” well, this is how it happens. Your LEF will organize the physical reality around you to mirror your thoughts and beliefs faithfully. If you don’t upgrade the wisdom in your LEF and choose instead to stay stuck in the same old thoughts—Mom ruined my life, or The stork dropped me off at the wrong home, or Heart disease runs in my family, or whatever old story you habitually run— you create this in your life.

In Eastern philosophy, this cause-and-effect is known as karma. And being stuck in karma is not a fun way to go through life—unless spending a good part of life in therapy is your idea of fun! When you raise the quality of your LEF, you can begin to express the genes for health and longevity, and live a more original and rewarding life. To do this you begin by detoxifying your brain and feeding it the neuronutrients and fuel that will give you access to the experience of Oneness where you can upgrade your field, what I call downloading version 7.0 of the human software.

Our LEF is a gateway to the invisible matrix of wisdom where everything is intertwined, where every thought we have impacts every cell in our body and every molecule in the cosmos. Quantum physics offers us an apt metaphor in the phenomenon known as entanglement: two particles can be mysteriously interlinked in such a way that even if they are at opposite ends of the galaxy, if you change the direction in which one particle is spinning, the other immediately reverses its spin. At first scientists thought entanglement might be a demonstration of faster-than-light communication. Later they understood that it was simply the nature of related particles. The sages of the Amazon and Andes that I studied with believe that entanglement is the nature of all of creation, that we are all related. That is why they—and many Native Americans—refer to all living beings as “all my relations.”

When you participate in the shared awareness of all Creation, you recognize your Oneness with all beings and with nature. How can you harm the earth or other beings when you and they are inseparable? Conversely, how can you not attend to your own healing if you care about your fellow beings? Once you’ve awakened to Oneness, the idea of looking out for yourself at the expense of others is inconceivable.

Learn more about Oneness and its role in health and healing in my forthcoming book, Grow a New Body, available for preorder now,

Alberto Villoldo PhD is a medical anthropologist and psychologist who has studied the shamanic healing practices of the Amazon and the Andes for more than 30 years. In his teachings and writings, he shares the experience of infinity and its ability to heal and transform us, to free us from the temporal chains that keep us fettered to illness, old age and disease.

He is the founder of the world-renowned Four Winds Society, which teaches the philosophy and practice of energy medicine, and of the Light Body School, and is the director of the Center for Energy Medicine in Los Lobos, Chile. thefourwinds.com